Well, yes they do. I gave you an example of one. There are plenty of others.The problem is that such foundational things which are proposed as being beyond doubt do not exist. — Metaphysician Undercover
If they are foundational, they act as propositions which can be either true or false and we can ask for justification, therefore they are not beyond doubt. — Metaphysician Undercover
What's yours on religion? — tim wood
Further, Theists, many, absolutely believe, and as seems best to them profess that belief. With them I at least have no issue. I have my beliefs too, and I think believing is an important aspect of moral thinking. But I know of no even remotely Christian-based thinker who understands his religion (i.e., Christian) who claims g/G has real independent existence. Kant's denial of knowledge to make room for faith is also significant here. But to those who insist their belief is knowledge of, then make it knowledge: show us! Or — tim wood
God is the creator. I think we could get consensus on that. — Metaphysician Undercover
The point here being that believing in something and claiming it to independently exist are two different things. Confusion on this point abounds, and people who are confused can be in this respect toxic. — tim wood
God is the creator. I think we could get consensus on that. — MU
Ok. Anyone second this? — tim wood
Beyond that, what reality can you give [God], that is not an idea or any material form? — tim wood
The extraordinary and eccentric emphasis on "belief" in Christianity today is an accident of history that has distorted our understanding of religious truth. We call religious people "believers", as though acceptance of a set of doctrines was their principal activity, and before undertaking the religious life many feel obliged to satisfy themselves about the metaphysical claims of the church, which cannot be proven rationally since they lie beyond the reach of empirical sense data.
Most other traditions [i.e. other than Christian] prize practice above creedal orthodoxy: Buddhists, Hindus, Confucians, Jews and Muslims would say religion is something you do, and that you cannot understand the truths of faith unless you are committed to a transformative way of life that takes you beyond the prism of selfishness. All good religious teaching – including such Christian doctrines as the Trinity or the Incarnation – is basically a summons to action [or a way of being]. Yet instead of being taught to act creatively upon them, many modern Christians feel it is more important to "believe" them. Why?
In most pre-modern cultures, there were two recognised ways of attaining truth. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were crucial and each had its particular sphere of competence. Logos [corresponding with the modern conception of “science"] was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled us to control our environment and function in the world. It had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external realities. But logos could not assuage human grief or give people intimations that their lives had meaning. For that they turned to mythos, an early form of psychology, which dealt with the more elusive aspects of human experience.
Stories of heroes descending to the underworld were not regarded as primarily factual but taught people how to negotiate the obscure regions of the psyche [what we now call ‘the unconscious’]. In the same way, the purpose of a creation myth was therapeutic; before the modern period no sensible person ever thought it gave an accurate account of the origins of life [i.e. that it was literally true]. A cosmology was recited at times of crisis or sickness, when people needed a symbolic influx of the creative energy that had brought something out of nothing. Thus the Genesis myth, a polemic against Babylonian religion, was balm to the bruised spirits of the Israelites who had been defeated and deported by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar during the sixth century BCE. Nobody was required to "believe" it; like most peoples, the Israelites had a number of other mutually-exclusive creation stories and as late as the 16th century, Jews thought nothing of making up a new creation myth that bore no relation to Genesis but spoke more directly to their tragic circumstances at that time. [And actually there’s more than one creation myth in Genesis.]
Above all, myth was a programme of action. When a mythical narrative was symbolically re-enacted, it brought to light within the practitioner something "true" about human life and the way our humanity worked, even if its insights, like those of art, could not be proven rationally. [Scholar Mercia Eliade said it was a way of symbolically entering the ‘eternal domain’.]. If you did not act upon it, it would remain as incomprehensible and abstract – like the rules of a board game, which seem impossibly convoluted, dull and meaningless until you start to play [like a deaf alien watching the performance of a symphony orchestra and wonder what all those beings were doing ]
Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd.
Well, yes they do. I gave you an example of one. There are plenty of others. — Banno
By Christians not claiming God as independently existing, I mean that the founders of Christianity, and the thinkers on it, have (near as i can tell) believed and never questioned, and, never questioning, never bothered to spread their claim to nature or natural science. In short, God is simply a presupposition of their thinking. — tim wood
OK, I will try again. If you seriously set out on a quest to 'find out if there really were a God', like the proverbial buried treasure, how would you go about it? Where would you go, or what would you do, to find out? I mean, I explored the question at least some of the way through academia; others have set off to remote regions or searched out spiritual teachers or resided at ashrams. So to understand this kind of question requires engaging with it, requires adopting a method which is commensurate with the kind of question it is. And that's not necessarily something our techo-centric, science-centric, objectivist culture is going to know much about. — Wayfarer
You seem to have missed my post, way back earlier in the thread. I said that to think that there is such a thing as "the definition" would be a mistaken thought. So you will not get my consent on any proposed definition. And, it is evident in this thread that my position is correct, because there has been no consensus.That's why I said, "I think...". From your survey of the posts, what did you come up with? — tim wood
And I think you ned to renew your credential either/both as a Christian or someone who claims to know what Christianity is. The fundamental tenet is belief. — tim wood
Actually, I can’t help but think this mirrors exactly what Tim Wood makes of it. So, what is the matter with that approach? — Wayfarer
Picture the world you think atheists believe exists. — Pfhorrest
Now picture the world you think theists believe exists. — Pfhorrest
Now describe the difference between those two pictures. — Pfhorrest
That difference is what you think "God" means. — Pfhorrest
But would you also agree that material existence is criteriological? To exist, the materially existing thing must meet some criteria? If you agree, then demonstrate. If you do not agree, then for you, anything and everything exists. — tim wood
For 17th century philosophers, the term 'substance' is reserved for the ultimate constituents of reality on which everything else depends. This article discusses the most important theories of substance from the 17th century: those of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Although these philosophers were highly original thinkers, they shared a basic conception of substance inherited from the scholastic-Aristotelian tradition from which philosophical thinking was emerging. ...
Degrees of Reality
In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is.
With its strict division between selves and the world, subjects and objects, or mind and nature, this picture sets us against the world, in effect treating it as alien to us. And it is a bad picture, since in reality, Heidegger argues, we and the world cannot, even notionally, exist without one another: “self and world” are not “two beings”, but mutually dependent. The Cartesian picture results from viewing us in an over-intellectual way – as, essentially, “thinking things” who observe objects and mentally represent them. Phenomenological attention, undistorted by theory, to “things themselves” yields a very different picture of how we relate to the world, however. We do so, not as “spectators” or “thinkers”, but “primordially” as agents... 1
but it's not beyond doubt to me. — Metaphysician Undercover
But it's material existence we're stuck on, and you don't seem to get that the claim of material existence must be heretical and destructive of the essential nature of the God you appear to want. — tim wood
I don't insist on dictionary meanings, though they're a good place to start. Do you care to expand on these, or do you accept them as is. — tim wood
This is barely worth comment. I note the "can." The sense of it is that sometimes we may know the cause via effects and thinking, not that we will (nor how we might know that we do, or don't). And to be sure, he was all about plugging in just what he needed.
Again, this is all reasonable if you grant the founding argument of the existence of God. Without that, not-so-reasonable. — tim wood
IS this what you have in mind? — Banno
It ends not with something which is beyond doubt, but with something which we see no need to doubt. — Metaphysician Undercover
It ends not with something which is beyond doubt, but with something which we see no need to doubt. — Metaphysician Undercover
I don't see this as different from what I have suggested. — Banno
I don't see this as different from what I have suggested. — Banno
You say that these are things are "beyond doubt", in the sense that it would be unreasonable or irrational to doubt them.This implies that there is some sort of certainty inherent within these things. And so you conclude that there are fundamental certainties which are necessary as foundational, even to support the existence of doubt itself. "Doubting such things would mean never getting started on this tournament of doubts." — Metaphysician Undercover
But if we understand that, there is no question of faith. — TheWillowOfDarkness
How could we have a coherent omnipotent, omnipresent omniscient being? Wouldn't such a being be so overwhelmingly present as to be beyond doubt? — Banno
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